It's become as predictable a tradition as mistletoe, chestnuts, age-old songs, and milk and cookies. Every year around the holiday season, families and friends come together to debate a time-honored controversy: Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?
So firstly, the answer is yes. Of course it is. And secondly, it's not the only offbeat Christmas movie that you watch this holiday season. Maybe you need a break from the mirth and merriment. Maybe you're a bit overloaded on the sweetness. And what better way to mitigate that than to add some spice?
Here are 10 alternative Christmas movies like Die Hard to watch this holiday season. Because if Die Hard is a Christmas movie (and it is!), then these are too.
The Holdovers
This movie takes the most un-merry premise — a college student is forced to stay on campus during the Christmas season — and turns it into a heartwarming tale. The Holdovers follows a college professor who rediscovers his humanity, a student receives familial reassurance, and a school cook reconciles her grief. They find the Christmas spirit in the unlikeliest place, and in a way that isn't mawkish or overly sentimental.
American Psycho
It's the story of Patrick Bateman: investment banker, sexual predator, and serial killer. This movie uses a Christmas party as a cover for deviance; Bateman wants to appear normal and fit in. But he can't help but stand out awkwardly, with reindeer antlers affixed to his head. "Merry X-mas" indeed.
Iron Man 3
Tony Stark suits up Mark 42 with "Jingle Bells" playing on a record player. But the Christmas connection goes much further than that, thanks to a lonely kid that Tony befriends in rural Tennessee named Harley Keener. At his lowest moment, Tony becomes a father figure to the boy. And by the end of the movie, he becomes a literal Santa Claus and gives him a roomful of Stark technology. The entire movie is about redemption, the importance of family, and the resolution to be a better, more giving person in the future.
Gremlins
Gremlins was rated PG when it came out. And the complaints about its inappropriateness for children — it is a horror film, after all — created so much controversy that the movie, along with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, led the MPAA to develop the PG-13 rating. The Christmas setting of Gremlins is crucial to its dark-humored nature, and it rears its head in key moments. Everyone remembers adorable Gizmo and the three rules for caring for him. Fewer people remember the Gremlin Christmas carolers who went on a murderous, cartoonish rampage. But man, it's funny.
Batman Returns
The film's big set piece takes place at Gotham's official Christmas tree lighting. Christmas lights deck the halls in every other shot. And yet, moodiness hangs over Gotham City like a heavy coat. Batman Returns uses Christmas as cruel irony. Its imagery reminds us of the warmth and safety that Penguin's parents denied him. For some people, Christmas isn't an affirmation of what they have. It's a cruel reminder of what they've lost or never had in the first place.
Ghostbusters II
The boys wear Santa hats for about four seconds during a montage reel, but that's not what makes Ghostbusters II a Christmas movie. It might actually be a movie for New Year's Eve, because that's when Vigo the Carpathian frees himself from his painting to take over the world. But the explicit Christmas connection comes at the very end of the film. In place of the Vigo portrait, we get an oil painting of a faux-Nativity scene, with baby Oscar flanked by Egon, Ray, Winston, and Peter.
Rent
Rent is a rock musical about lost souls pursuing artistic, authentic lives. But neither artistry nor authenticity is conducive to making money, and by extension, paying rent. Still, that doesn't stop our heroes from pursuing their goals and avoiding futility. And during the holiday season, when Act I of this musical takes place, the struggles hit hard. It's not always about loving the family you have. It's about loving the family you find.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
The first Harry Potter film has an intangible quality that the other Potter films lack. It's the thrill of discovery—of revealing a hidden, magical land, a tiny bit at a time. You can see the wonderment in Harry's eyes as he's awed by the floating candles, the transforming cats, and the house ghosts. And you can clearly see his awe during the Christmas scenes, when he feels, in his heart, the familial love that he's missed for so long.
Edward Scissorhands
One of director Tim Burton's most personal movies, Edward Scissorhands tells the story of an outcast—an eccentric inventor's unfinished creation—whose hands are replaced with scissors. The key, most emotional scenes are the ones where Edward sculpts ice statues, and the resulting ice detritus falls around him like snow.
Burton frames the entire film around the Christmas season as a children's bedtime story explaining why it snows. And like Christmas, the story is one of magic, based on fantasy, escapism, and childish faith.
Eyes Wide Shut
Stanley Kubrick's final film was an anti-erotic thriller. A well-to-do doctor (Tom Cruise), tormented by his wife's (Nicole Kidman) adulterous sexual fantasies, spends an evening roaming the streets of Manhattan. And while doing so, he intrudes upon a massive, ritualistic orgy, staged by a masked elite.
That this all takes place during the holiday season is juxtapositional; we see depraved sexual crimes taking place against a backdrop of Christmas lights. We see a daughter asking to watch The Nutcracker, and then 15 minutes later, we see a prostitute overdosing on heroin at a party. It's all materialism on the surface, and then it's depravity all the way down. This is Christmas at its most cynical, which makes it a perfect watch for our modern times.